Game details

On its face, Life Is Strange: Before the Storm sounds like the most superfluous prequel imaginable. The original game told the tale of teenage duo Chloe and Max as they investigated the disappearance of Chloe’s best friend in the Pacific Northwestern town of Arcadia Bay. In the process, the pair rediscovered their own lost friendship and the many unseen layers to the people around them. Oh, and player character Max just happened to be able to rewind time.

Before the Storm rewinds time, too—to three years before Max’s reality-bending and ultimately heartbreaking return. This time you play as Chloe to unravel her relationship with Rachel Amber, the girl whose vanishing kicked off the first game.

Further Reading

What made me so tentative about Before the Storm’s premise is that Life Is Strange was full of revelations. By the end of the original game’s five chapters, we know Rachel’s fate, how Chloe went from mathlete to punk in the years since Max moved away and back again, and just who can be trusted in Arcadia Bay. Life Is Strange was an adventure game in the Telltale vein, putting characters and choices first. After all that, a prequel featuring much of that same cast didn’t seem like it would provide much opportunity to learn or room to grow.

Breaking free

Having played the first of Before the Storm’s three episodes, my prediction holds true. Most everybody’s an a-hole. Chloe’s would-be stepdad is a militant misogynist, as expected. School bully Victoria Chase is... still school bully Victoria Chase. From the jump, nearly every NPC questions, confronts, and otherwise dismisses Chloe on subjects ranging from whether she knows as much about cars as she says, to if she deserves to attend the private school she has been ditching.

Here’s the thing: it totally works. While most of the non-player characters can’t show their more complicated sides, Chloe has plenty of room for growth.

This isn’t the confidently furious rebel Max connects with in 2013. In 2010, when the prequel takes place, Chloe is only just learning how angry she is at the world and how to express it. So she starts the episode thinking that sneaking into an “overage” concert is the height of rebellion. Yet when the most popular girl in school, Rachel, takes a sudden interest in her, Chloe drops everything just to get in her good graces.

Ah, yes. Sounds like things get much happier in the next episodes.

There is a great deal of angst in this game.

You can examine. You can interact. Sometimes you can talk. It's one of those adventure games.

Before the Storm one-ups Life Is Strange in one respect: the graphics are much smoother.

Max isn't around in Before the Storm, but her absence is felt.

Younger Chloe isn't completely different from her 2013 self.

"Backtalk Challenges" are the prequel's defining new mechanic.

Chloe playing D&D is my favorite scene in the whole episode...

Finally, we get to meet Rachel Amber in person.

Sometimes it's what you gotta do.

Dialogue choices help frame the tone of Rachel and Chloe's relationship.

Their budding friendship is jarring at first, but it should quickly make sense even to those who never played Life Is Strange. Before the Storm swiftly lays out just how alone Chloe is after her father’s sudden death and Max’s subsequent ghosting. Meanwhile, the prequel leans heavily into themes of sexual awakening (depending on your dialogue choices, of course). The first game only hinted at these, but, to me at least, Rachel is clearly primed to be Chloe’s first love. This lends much more weight to Chloe’s reciprocated interest in Rachel.

Rachel represents a lot to our protagonist—most of it unsaid but subtly teased out with genuine-sounding teen angst. Toward the end of the episode, when Rachel clearly wants to be left alone, Chloe takes it personally. She says she understands, that she knows how hard she is to be around, and that Rachel would be better off just leaving. It’s exactly the kind of self-absorbed, self-deprecating, insulating statement I know I said or thought a thousand times in high school.

Many layers, not all in one place

Rachel, to her credit, doesn’t let go of her own problems to soothe Chloe’s worries. She gets pissed and leaves, acting like a real person rather than a mere sounding board for Chloe’s baggage. That characterization is vital to understanding why Rachel is someone Chloe comes to care about.

In Life Is Strange, most of the returning characters are flatter than the multi-layered representations shown in the original Life Is Strange. Rachel, who wasn’t seen in the previous game, doesn’t run into this problem.

But even the rest of Arcadia Bay’s flatness is put to good use. Before the Storm doesn’t have Max’s time-rewind mechanics, but it’s not all straightforward discussions, either. The prequel includes unfortunately named “Backtalk Challenges,” which let Chloe roast the obnoxious townies around her.

Backtalk is basically insult swordfighting in the tradition of Monkey Island but slightly more serious. Chloe can turn characters’ words against them by picking insulting dialogue options that reflect the last thing they said. They’re timed and, in most cases, very silly. No teenager in the real world has ever been as eloquent at smack talk as Chloe Price.

Yet... I kind of liked the exchanges. Chloe puts up with a lot of crap from the one-dimensionally awful people around her. The Backtalk Challenges serve as a good pressure release valve against all that built-up crap. Her mother’s boyfriend, Dave, for instance, insists on explaining how to fix a car engine—despite Chloe repeatedly explaining that her father already taught her. So when Dave tries to lay down even more life advice, Chloe can decide she has had enough with some exquisite rejoinders.

The challenges basically “game-ify” Chloe’s growing realization that most authority figures can’t force her to do anything. She’s growing from the wannabe punk at the start of Before the Storm to the freewheeling petty criminal shown at the start of Life Is Strange.

Necessary or not?

I suspect there will be consequences to that evolution. This first episode already hints at our heroine getting wrapped up in the more genuinely dangerous criminal element of Arcadia Bay—not to mention a few folks who seem like they could become dangerous just over having their pride hurt by a 16-year-old girl. But helping Chloe own some mansplaining micro-tyrant with a terrible mustache is still gratifying.

Since Before the Storm is a prequel, however, I’m more interested in watching Rachel and Chloe’s relationship develop than worrying about any real physical danger. I loved Life Is Strange for the way it peeled away at and built upon its characters, and Rachel and Chloe’s interactions provide plenty of room for more of that in Before the Storm.

I wasn’t sold on the premise of a Life Is Strange prequel at first, but Rachel and Chloe capture the series’ uneasy, us-against-the-world energy and melodrama. The Backtalk Challenges could stand to be a little less scripted, and I’m not as sold on the character interactions, aside from Rachel. That said, so far, Before the Storm is a thematically appropriate way to fill in the original game’s missing pieces.

The Good:

Dialogue feels genuine, for a bunch of rebellious teens

Chloe and Rachel’s relationship touches on themes the first game glossed over

“Backtalk Challenges” are goofy but often satisfying

The Bad:

Some of the “backtalk” dialogue feels too scripted

Most of the supporting cast’s development can't start until Life Is Strange

The Ugly:

It’s not always clear if Chloe is trying too hard to seem like a rebel or if the game is trying too hard to make her seem that way.

Verdict: Before the Storm is at its best when it focuses on the untold elements of Life Is Strange. So far, those moments capture the spirit of the original, but I’m anxious to see if it can hold up as the timelines converge. Buy it.